And Then He Kissed Her

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  Once he was in her rooms, he thought he had a fair chance of bringing her around to his way of thinking on the topic. Her propriety was a shell; underneath it, she was soft as butter. She wanted him, and he knew he could use that desire, use his experience against her innocence to pleasure them both. First he’d drug her with kisses as she had drugged him. Then he’d take her down on that exotic Turkish carpet she had, rid her of any nonsensical ideas in her head about what men and women were supposed to do, and show her what they really did.

  Two grenadier matrons crossed his line of vision. They gave Harry and his expensive, finely tailored clothes a long, curious study as they passed by. He glanced around and saw that a group of boys playing marbles on the corner had stopped their game and were also staring at him with curiosity. He knew he couldn’t stand here, in this enclave of bobbin lace curtains and working-class respectability, much longer without drawing even more attention.

  Hell with it, he thought. Who cares what anybody thinks?

  He straightened away from the wall, picked up the books, and started across to her front door, then stopped in the middle of the street for no reason whatsoever.

  With an oath, he changed direction and walked to the group of boys playing marbles on the corner. A few minutes later, one of those boys was sixpence richer, Emma had the complete set of Burton’s The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, and Harry was on his way home in a hansom cab, wondering if he was the one who was demented.

  Chapter 15

  Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; Then to that twenty, add a hundred more.

  Robert Herrick, 1648

  Aunt Lydia would have returned the books. Her father would have burned them. Emma kept them.

  She didn’t even waver over the decision to do so, a fact which rather surprised her. Even more surprising, she chose to display the salacious collection on the bookshelf in her parlor, where she had a perfect view of them from her desk. She could look at them to her heart’s content while she attempted to write about proper decorum. Perhaps it was hypocrisy of a sort, but every time she looked up from her work and saw the bright red covers of those books, they made her smile, a secret delight she could hug to herself and savor whenever she wished.

  She was a rebel, after all, it seemed. Like her inclination to curse when she was frustrated or her indulgence in too much chocolate when she was sad, those books were a tiny rebellion against the strict confines of her upbringing. Marlowe’s kiss, however, was a different matter. Allowing it had been a far more dangerous form of rebellion than a few curse words or a set of notorious books.

  Mrs. Inkberry had been right to remind her of the fragility of a woman’s virtue, and the consequences a woman suffered if she lost it. Yet every time Emma thought of Marlowe and what had happened in the bookshop, a dark, hot longing stirred in her soul, another secret delight, but one she could not afford to savor. Whenever she felt it well up from deep within, Emma strove to suppress it, reminding herself that no good could come of romantic notions about a man who would never give a woman the honor of his name.

  They had taken to corresponding about her work through couriers of late, but when she received a note from him requesting that they resume their meetings in person, she was certain sufficient time had passed for her resolve to once again be strong. Nearly two weeks had passed since he’d kissed her in Inkberry’s bookshop, and that amount of time was surely long enough to regain one’s self-possession and curb one’s more wanton thoughts and impulses.

  But late Wednesday afternoon when she walked into his office, she knew she had been utterly and completely wrong. As his secretary announced her, he turned from the window to look at her, and his smile pierced her heart, bringing back all the sweet, painful pleasure she’d felt the moment his lips had touched hers. When their gazes met, her dark, secret hunger was in his eyes, too, and she knew all her efforts had been for naught. That kiss had created an intimacy between them that would forever exist. Twenty years could pass, and it would not matter. The moment she saw him again, she would still feel this brief, heartrending pang of joy.

  Her steps faltered, and she stopped still several feet from the chair opposite his desk, one hand tightly clenched around the handle of her sturdy leather dispatch case. She couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t seem to take another step. “Hullo,” she said.

  “Emma.” His smile widened, and the pleasure inside her became unbearable. She lowered her gaze, but she found that did not help her, for peeking above the breast pocket of his dark blue jacket was the unmistakable pink edge of the thank-you note she’d sent him for the books. She bit her lip.

  “Will that be all, sir?”

  The sound of the secretary’s voice, so ordinary, broke the spell. Marlowe looked past her. “Yes, thank you, Quinn.”

  The secretary departed, and Emma walked the few remaining feet to Marlowe’s desk. She sat down, set her dispatch case by her feet, and tried to remember the real reason she was here. “Shall we go over revisions, my lord?” she asked, striving to sound brisk and businesslike, acutely aware of the open door into the outer office, knowing the man sitting at her former desk could hear their conversation. “Are they so very extensive?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  She didn’t tell him it was because while writing them she’d spent far too much time staring at a shelf full of red leather books and trying to put him and his kiss out of her mind. “I thought that was why you wanted to meet in person.”

  He glanced at the open door behind her, then leaned forward and murmured in a low voice, “I wanted to meet in person because I wanted to see you.”

  Her pleasure welled up and spilled over into a smile. “Oh.”

  He pulled a sheaf of papers in front of him. “But since you asked, I do have a few things.” He began flipping through the pages. “You tended to go on too long about blanc mange. Your piece on the history of chocolate sounds too much like a teacher’s lesson. You need to spice it up more. If you need help with that, I’d be happy to assist.”

  Emma sucked in her breath, and he paused, looking up with an innocent air. “Something wrong?”

  “No.” She cleared her throat. “Not at all. What else?”

  He returned his attention to sheets in front of him. “I think that’s all. Except that in the instructions for how to make a caramel sauce, you forgot the sugar.”

  “I did?”

  He nodded, smiling. “Had trouble concentrating, did you?”

  Emma wasn’t going to admit that for anything. She held out her hand. “Let me see.”

  He handed over her articles, and she saw that she had, indeed, forgotten the most important ingredient in her recipe for caramel sauce, and despite Marlowe’s assurance that her revisions weren’t too extensive, she discovered the error in the caramel sauce recipe was only one of many. The pages seemed covered with his corrections and comments.

  Heavens, she thought with dismay, if she continued to be in this much of a muddle, her writing career was in serious jeopardy.

  A slight cough sounded from behind her. She and Marlowe both glanced at the doorway and saw Quinn standing there.

  “I have finished my duties for the day, sir, and it is now past six o’clock,” the young man said. “Is there anything else you require before I depart?”

  “No, Quinn, you may go.”

  “Very good, sir. If that is all, I shall bid you good evening.” The secretary bowed and departed, and a few moments later, Emma heard the outer door to the suite close. She and Marlowe were alone.

  “I’ll start making these changes to night,” she said hastily, bending to shove the papers into her dispatch case. “Did you read through my outlines?”

  “Yes.” He reached for another sheaf of papers. “They seem quite acceptable, but there was one thing I wanted to ask you about.” He began flipping through pages. “Give me a moment, and I’ll find it.”

  She watched him from beneath the wide brim of her straw bonnet as he sear
ched through the pages of her outline. A lock of his dark hair fell over his brow, and he absently shoved it back, only to have it fall again. She wanted to reach across and touch it, curl it in her fingers. She wanted to press her mouth to his mouth. She wanted—

  “Here it is,” he said, tapping his finger against a line of text. “What is fan language?”

  She took a deep breath, shoving thoughts of kissing him firmly out of her mind. “Oh, it’s something my aunt told me about when I was a girl. Since I decided to do a piece about fans, I thought it would be amusing to include it.”

  He looked up. “But what is it?”

  “Supposedly, women in former days used fans to communicate covert messages to young men in whom they had romantic interest. A woman might wish for a particular man to ask her to dance, for example, or indicate that she desires to make his acquaintance, and she would use specific gestures with her fan to tell him so.”

  “Gestures? I don’t know what you mean.” He stood up and came around to her side of the desk. “Show me.”

  “What, right this minute?”

  “Yes. Have you a fan with you?”

  “Of course.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her summer fan of ivory-and-willow-green-striped silk. “I always carry a fan in summer.”

  “Excellent.” He gestured to her to stand up. “I don’t understand this fan language business, and I want to see these gestures for myself.”

  Emma rose from her chair. After thinking for a moment, she gestured to the other side of the room. “Go over there and stand in the doorway,” she told him. When he had complied, she went on, “Pretend we’re at a ball and—”

  “I can’t do it,” he interrupted her. “I can’t pretend we’re at a ball when you’re wearing that monstrosity of a hat.”

  “It is not a monstrosity!” she shot back, then immediately touched a hand to her bonnet. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Everything. Why women put all those feathers on their hats nowadays is incomprehensible to me. You look like you have an ostrich’s backside on top of your head. Besides, the brim’s so wide, unless you’re looking up at me, I can’t see your face, and I like looking at your face. Take it off.”

  This male criticism of her best bonnet, a bonnet that had required a shilling’s worth of feathers to make it over in the current fashion, was completely forgiven with his admission about her face. Emma tucked the fan back in her pocket, and with both hands free, she pulled out her hat pin, took off her hat, and laid both accessories on the desk. Then she once again pulled out her fan. “Now, as I was saying, pretend we’re at a ball. You’ve just come in, and though we’ve never met, I’ve seen you, and I like the look of you.”

  “We don’t have to pretend that part,” he said, slanting her a grin that was too self-satisfied for words. “You did call me handsome, remember?”

  She gave him a frown of mock sternness in return. “Pay attention,” she ordered and opened the fan wide. “You observe how I am holding it, in my left hand, in front of my face, looking at you over the top? That means I desire to make your acquaintance.”

  He tilted his head, studying her across the room. “If you were holding it in your right hand, it would mean something different?”

  “Yes, that would mean I wanted you to follow me. At which point, I would exit the room, and you would come after me.”

  He gave her a dubious look. “People really did this? You’re not making it up?”

  Emma laughed. “I accused my aunt of that very thing. I told her that if you wanted to convey secret messages, a fan hardly served the purpose, since everyone else would see and understand what you were saying. But she was most insistent that she and her friends talked to men this way at balls and parties.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe it. Men would never go along with this sort of thing. It’s too complicated, and too subtle. How would any man know you were communicating with him and not simply using the fan for its intended purpose? What you’ve shown me is too easy for a man to misunderstand. We prefer direct, specific communication.”

  “Yes, but women are not allowed to be direct. If I wanted to meet you, I couldn’t just walk over to you and introduce myself.”

  “More’s the pity. I can safely speak for men everywhere when I say we’d adore it if women would do that very thing.”

  “I daresay you would, but that’s not the way it’s done. You know that as well as I do. Of course, I could inquire of my friends if they knew you and could perform an introduction, but I might not wish to be even that obvious. Gossip does get about.”

  “God forbid society should ever allow a woman to do something in a straightforward fashion. All right, then, let’s assume I’ve correctly interpreted your signal that you wish to meet me.” He started across the room toward her. “And since I have a strong passion for women with red hair, I most definitely want to meet you.”

  Emma caught her breath in surprise, and her hand tightened around the fan in her grasp. “You prefer women with black hair.”

  He halted in front of her and lifted one hand to the side of her face. His eyes met hers as he began to twirl a loose tendril of her hair around his fingers. “I’m changing my mind.”

  His knuckles brushed against her cheek, and he tucked the strand of hair behind her ear. Her body began to tingle at the feather-light contact.

  “Have you changed yours, Emma?”

  He’d asked her something. She blinked. “What?”

  “You said you didn’t like me,” he reminded her, his fingertips lightly tracing the curve of her ear, making her shiver. “You said I was dissolute.”

  “You are.” Unfortunately, that fact didn’t seem to have much effect on her dazed senses. She closed her eyes and tried to remind herself of her conversation with Mrs. Inkberry, but thinking about her virtue didn’t help much, either.

  His hand curved around the back of her neck. His palm was warm against her nape, his thumb caressed her jaw. “But do you still dislike me?”

  “I never disliked you.”

  He made a sound of disbelief that caused her to open her eyes. “I know that’s what I said, and when I said it I thought it to be true, but it wasn’t. Not really. I disapproved of you, yes, and I resented you because I felt you didn’t give my writing the chance it deserved. And there’s no doubt you took me completely for granted when I was your secretary. I hated that, and it’s something I won’t ever let you do again. But as hard as I tried to dislike you, I never really could.” She swallowed hard. “Every time I become thoroughly exasperated with you, you manage to get around me somehow. Soften me up or say just the right thing or make me laugh.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps that’s because, despite my flaws, I’m a very likable fellow. Charming, witty, modest…”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it. He was charming, and she had always been well aware of it, though she hadn’t always appreciated it as she did now.

  But none of that meant she could let him take advantage of her. When his hand tightened at her neck and he leaned toward her, she snapped the fan closed, bringing it between them, pressing it to her mouth before his lips could touch hers. He straightened and let her go. “Is that a signal of some sort?”

  She nodded and lowered the fan so that she could reply. “It means I don’t trust you.”

  “Emma!” He looked at her, obviously pretending to be offended. He put a hand on her waist. “You don’t trust me?”

  She shoved his hand away. “Not one little bit.”

  “You really do like to make my life difficult these days, don’t you?”

  Her smile widened. “It has a certain appeal, yes.”

  “Enjoy it now, for I will get my revenge. Now, where were we?” He frowned as if thinking about it. “Ah, yes, I’ve correctly interpreted your signal that you wanted to meet me. Let’s suppose well-meaning friends have introduced us. So, the next step is clear.” He bowed to her. “Miss Dove, may I have this dance?”

&
nbsp; “We can’t dance. There’s no music.”

  “This is our enchanted moment. Don’t spoil it with trivialities.” He took up her gloved hand in his bare one and put his other hand on her waist. “We can sing the music.”

  “I don’t sing,” she said even as she shoved her fan in her pocket and lifted her left hand to his shoulder in preparation for a dance. “When I was a little girl, I heard the vicar tell my father I couldn’t carry a tune in a milk pail. My father told me to mouth the hymns in church silently from then on.” She paused, surprised that the memory of that incident so long ago still had the power to sting. She tried to shrug it off with a smile. “The congregation was grateful, no doubt.”

  Marlowe didn’t smile back at her, and oddly enough, his sudden gravity made him seem more handsome than ever before. “Sing as loud as you please, Emma. I don’t give a damn if you sound like a corncrake.”

  That sting was suddenly in her eyes and she blinked rapidly, looking away. Tightness squeezed her chest. “Thank you, but I think it would be best if you did any singing required.”

  “Very well.” He swayed back and forth, pulling her with him as he counted, “And two, and three, and four.” With that, they started to dance and he began to sing one of Gilbert’s nonsensical Bab Ballads in a rollicking baritone. “Strike the concertina’s melancholy string; blow the spirit-stirring harp like anything—”

  She burst into laughter, interrupting the song, but he didn’t miss a step. “The Story of Prince Agib?” she asked as he continued to lead her in a waltz about the room.

  “Yes, well, given your love of the Arabian Nights, it seemed appropriate.”

  He hummed a few more bars as they danced, but then, for no reason she could identify, they both came to a stop. She stared up into his face, and in the sudden silence, everything else in the world seemed to fade away into insignificance. Everything but him.